Monday, May 26, 2014

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

Free US/UK Kindle
Classic

"OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres
of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing
generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why
should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not
we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion
by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in
nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the
powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among
the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of
its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in
the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own
works and laws and worship."

This was written in 1836.
It is difficult to imagine a time when our view was through the eyes of
those who went before. We seem to be
pressing ever forward. We only look back
in nostalgia for those things that brought us pleasure in the past, never for instruction. I speak generally, but I cannot think of a time since Emerson when the present was absorbed
in the past. I think this lack of interest is accelerating. Today the price of antiques
is falling because they are not in fashion anymore. I tutor school children who only learn history in the classroom. It is not learned from the media or their families.

What would Emerson have thought if he knew we were
picking up his essay now to see nature as seen through his eyes?

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About Me

I am a Hoosier who spent many years in Chicago and am now in San Antonio. My passion is reuniting lost dogs with their families. I am the Director of the Facebook page, Lost Dogs of Texas and a co-founder of "Lost Dog Awareness Day."

I am not new to reuniting families. After Katrina, I helped people in evacuee shelters in San Antonio to track their missing family members. After that work ended, I started a volunteer group that reunited over 1500 Katrina animals with their families by deciphering information online and tracing evacuees.

I am writing a book about two stolen Yorkies who were found after an amazing eighteeen month search. It is tentatively titled "Finding Baxter and Cooper: A Woman, a Private Investigator and their Successful Search for Two Stolen Dogs."